If you add two of those variables and assign the result to another variable, you're already at about 96 characters before considering whitespace. I don't think it's that hard to exceed 80 characters doing very simple things.
The issue wasn't the fact that some expressions are longer than 80 cols (that one is longer than 120, even, its 136 characters minimum), but that they can't be clearly and appropriately written in 80 cols.
That example is pretty trivial, but I'd hate to read code where every other logical line is broken up into multiple. It breaks up the flow of the code and makes it much harder to read, especially with how the indentation constantly changes (which is especially important in a language like Python, because I've trained my eyes to the special meaning of whitespace, so seeing non-significant indentation adds additional noise).
Right, but again, can you see you've just gone abstract and handwavey. I'd also hate to read code where every other line is broken midway through an expression. Can you give an example of code that 80cols would force that on, which doesn't have deeper issues of clarity and structure?
It's not a trick question. I've written millions of lines of code over 20 years, and I've been renowned for using overly long names (compared to most Python coders), but I've not found that issue. Some breaks, yes, but never 'every other line', or even nearly that.
You're right, I don't write much Python anymore and don't have an example on hand. But I write Swift for a living now, and I know that if I restricted my lines to 80 characters wide, I would have to split up a lot of lines, including most method definitions. I much prefer the long lines, because if the details aren't important, they're easier to skip, and they're much easier to scan through when you're trying to read a large amount of code at once.
Thanks, its a good point. I've only played with swift, but I've written a fair amount of objective C, and I didn't put 80 cols in coding standards for my company for that. We got away with that because the environment was fixed. And the path of least resistance was to use it in the way Apple told you to. You couldn't even split XCode more than two ways back then (iirc). So the issue of different tools, different screen layouts, and different workflows didn't raise. So yeah, 80cols isn't a panacea across all languages.
